1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a print image-forming method and device employed in a printing apparatus, such as a tape printing apparatus which is capable of carrying out fixed length printing, for forming a print image to be printed in a preset printing area on a print material, and to a printing apparatus incorporating the print image-forming device.
2. Prior Art
In the tape printing apparatus of this kind which is capable of carrying out fixed length printing, for instance, the length of a printing area of a tape as well as forward and backward margins (forward margin length and backward margin length of the printing area) are set before printing, and after printing, a printed portion of the tape is cut off at a predetermined cutting position, whereby a label or the like having a predetermined length can be created.
In other words, a desired print image is required to be printed in a printing area limited by a preset length or the like. Therefore, a print image-forming device for use with the tape printing apparatus of the above-mentioned kind is required to form a print image such that the print image can be printed in such a preset printing area.
On the other hand, the tape printing apparatus of the above-mentioned kind is capable of printing a plurality of paragraphs arranged along the length of a tape, and a further printing line or a plurality of lines of strings of characters entered and arranged in each paragraph, as well as designating a character size line by line as desired. Further, to save the trouble of specifying the character size, line by line, e.g. for a paragraph having a large number of lines to be printed, it is also possible to collectively specify the character size for all the lines in each paragraph, as shown in FIGS. 17A to 17C.
For instance, in a so-called "Uniform Character Size Mode", as shown in FIG. 17A, an identical character size is automatically set to each of all of a plurality of lines (three lines in the case of the illustrated example) according to the tape width and the number of lines.
Further, as shown in FIG. 17B, when a "Leave-it-to-apparatus Mode" is selected, the character size is automatically set for each line according to the number of characters assigned thereto such that a line having a larger number of characters is set to a smaller character size (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 7-125376) so as to make the character strings substantially identical in length.
Furthermore, in a "Character Size Menu Mode" appearing in FIG. 17C, one of abstract and relative character size settings, "LMS" is selected, for instance, to designate "Large", "Medium" and "Small" character sizes for the three lines, respectively, whereby the three lines are automatically set to respective character sizes according to the designated character sizes (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 6-143690).
The proposed tape printing apparatuses are capable of designating various character size-setting modes paragraph by paragraph, as described above. When a basic image as the source of a print image is created and a fixed length is set to the same, however, if the created basic image cannot be printed in a range of the fixed length (fixed length area), the basic image is uniformly reduced in size without discriminating sizes of paragraphs therein, to fit the same into the fixed length area. Thus, the print image is formed based on the basic image such that it is printable within the fixed length area, and then printed.
In other words, even if various character size-setting modes are freely used to form a basic image, the user's intention which he had in forming the basic image comes to be disregarded when the formed basic image cannot be printed within a fixed length area set by the user.
For instance, according to these tape printing apparatuses, when the user desires to form labels having portions printed with titles of videos or the like such that the portions are identical in size between the labels, and store a plurality of videos having the labels affixed thereto in a state arranged side by side, important paragraphs including the titles of the videos are uniformly reduced similarly to other unimportant paragraphs, if any of the paragraphs is larger than a predetermined length. As a result, the portions of the created labels printed with the titles are reduced in size, which hinders the user from achieving his desired and original object, that is, the object of forming labels having portions printed with titles of videos such that the portions containing the titles are identical in size.